Chuck Stevens, chief financial officer of General Motors Co., spoke extensively with CFO Journal about the auto maker’s international operations. His comments about Russia were included in a special section on Tuesday.

Corporate pension plans are getting a shot in the arm from a surging stock market. Investments in the average company’s pension plan are expected to be at levels that cover 96% of future obligations at the end of the year, according to J.P. Morgan. Funding levels are up from 77% at the end of last year—a figure that was essentially unchanged since the financial crisis of 2008, the WSJ’s Gregory Zuckerman and Michael Corkery note.

The threat of a government shutdown is mounting, but that’s not likely to stop the rollout of the health-care overhaul. The major financing for the Affordable Care Act—including subsidies for lower-income people to buy health insurance from private carriers on the marketplaces—comes from mandatory spending rather than the discretionary spending that Congress is debating, the WSJ’s Amy Schatz writes.

General Motors CFO Dan Ammann said the company’s agreement to buy back a large portion of the U.S. Treasury’s stake in the auto maker will help remove an issue that’s been holding back its stock price.

General Motors took a significant step on Thursday in its effort to grow its captive finance unit when GM Financial sold $500 million in bonds. The sale marks GM’s first foray back to the bond market since the Detroit auto maker defaulted on $27 billion in bonds in its 2009 bankruptcy. And now that the ice is broken, the finance unit expects to make more such offerings as it ramps up growth.